Reddit’s just a huge timesink, right? Wrong. It’s an endless supply of relevant information, if you know where to look.

Submitting and voting on content, constantly, Reddit’s massive hivemind organizes a staggering amount of info. Combine this with the way Reddit is organized – the site is made up of thousands of communities discussing particular topics – and you can use the site to learn about almost anything. This can be useful for your job, personal life and hobbies – if you look in the right places.

Subscribe to memes, and you’ll get memes; subscribe to something productive, and you’ll get something productive. Here’s how to cut the crap and use Reddit to reach your self improvement goals.

Unsubscribe From Time Sinks

If you use Reddit, and you don’t have an account, you’re using Reddit wrong. Yes, checking out the front page from time to time can be fun, but you won’t have control over what you do and don’t see on the site until you sign up.

So get an account, if you don’t have one. Then head over to the my subreddits section on Reddit and clean things up. No, seriously: if something doesn’t look useful, get rid of it.

It might be hard to remove fun things, but if you plan on using Reddit productively you don’t want distractions mixed into your front page.

If you still want to look at distracting subreddits from time to time, browse to them directly during the time you’ve set aside as your break. If that doesn’t work for you, use two Reddit accounts: one for productive stuff, another for fun. Only use the fun one after work, or during breaks – during work hours, Reddit is for research.

Find Productive Subreddits

Now it’s time to replace the fluff with useful stuff. Obviously what’s actually useful to you depends on what you do for a living, or what personal goals you have for yourself.

This is just a starting point, of course: the most productive subreddits you can find are the ones relevant to your job and hobbies. You should use the subreddit search to find hidden communities with compiled resources and discussions around your work and hobbies. You can also check out Reddit Metrics, a guide to fast-growing communities – some of them may become useful to you.

Subscribe to useful information and you’ll be amazed how useful Reddit can become.

Find The Best All Time Posts

Not everyone realizes it, but you can sort Reddit posts in different ways. The default is to show you what’s “Hot”, meaning posts that are popular or rising right now – but you can instead see only the “Top” posts for the current day, week, month or even year.

You can even see the top posts of all time, which can be insanely useful. Let’s say you want to browse only the software r/MacApps deems best. Head to that subreddit, click the “Top” tab, then use the “Links from” menu at top-right to see the all time best posts:

Now you’ve got a list of the most popular software this subreddit has even linked to. It’s a great way to get a quick overview of a variety of topics, so keep it in mind the next time you’re looking for something specific.

Use RSS Instead Of The Site Itself

Finding subreddits in your category is great, but what if you’re not a regular Reddit user? And what if you’re simply afraid that any time spent on Reddit will eventually become a timesink?

There’s a solution: you can add particular subreddits to your RSS reader of choice. All you need to do is add “.rss” to the end of a subreddit. For example:

http://www.reddit.com/r/productivity/.rss

Of course, doing this is going to be like drinking from a fire hose. For a more limited selection, I recommend using only the “Top” results:

http://www.reddit.com/r/productivity/top/.rss

These RSS feeds are very useful if you want to keep up with the best posts from around the web, but don’t want to head to Reddit itself to do so.

But if you prefer desktop clients to websites, I’d recommend Reditr (pictured above). This desktop app for Windows, Mac and Linux lets you browse your subreddits in Tweetdeck-style columns, giving you a quick glance at a variety of topics. It’s probably better for productive use than Reddit’s streaming interface, so give it a shot and see how it works for you.

How Do You Use Reddit Productively?

So these are a few tips, but we want to know: how do you use Reddit to learn and get things done? What are your favourite subreddits? Let’s keep this conversation going in the comments, okay?

Oh, and if you need an outline of how Reddit works, check out our Reddit manual. It’s not productivity-focused, but it does outline the functionality of the site if you’re confused.

/gd/ is great if you are a graphics designer. You can get feedback on there if you do it right. There is even a 3DCG board.

The /ck/ food and cooking board is great. So is the health and fitness board

There is a math and science board that is really awesome. There is ofcourse the /g/ board for technology.

The /k/ board is fun if you are all about weapons.

/biz/ business and finance
/out/ outdoors
/trv/ travel

really any board that isn't /b/, /pol/ or under NSFW is informative and useful for a lot of cases especially if you want hardcore feedback and critisizm. Ofcourse you must be able to handle some real assholes but that's usually the people you deal with in real life :P.

Justin Pot is a technology journalist based in Portland, Oregon. He loves technology, people and nature – and tries to enjoy all three whenever possible. You can chat with Justin on Twitter, right now.